How affordable are homes in Sonoma County? According to Corelogic, an Irvine-based provider of consumer, financial and property data, Sonoma County home prices are increasing at a rate nearly double the national value.
An April 3 released report of the Corelogic Home Price Index and Forecast shows that Sonoma County* home prices increased by 11.4 percent year over year from February 2017 to February 2018 . That is a steep growth compared to the national bump of only 6.7 percent.
And it doesn’t look too promising going forward with prices expected to increase by 10.3 percent throughout California from 2018 to 2019.
But rest assured Sonomans, we have nothing to cry about if we look at the figures for Palo Alto*, where home prices increased by a whopping 18.3% from 2017 to 2018.
A recent report from Open Listings, an online home-buying startup, revealed that software engineers at some of the country’s top tech companies would have to spend over 28% of their monthly income to afford a monthly mortgage 20 minutes from work.
Why should we be concerned? Frank Martell, president and CEO of Corelogic, reports that “family income is rising more slowly than home prices and mortgage rates, meaning that the mortgage payment is a bigger bite out of income for new homebuyers.”
How do we compare to other parts of the Bay Area? Check out our gallery above.
*Sonoma County percentages are for the Santa Rosa metropolitan area. Palo Alto rates for the Palo Alto, San Jose, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara metropolitan statistical area.
